Content area
Full Text
Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter.
When, several years ago, a student brought me a copy of Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech titled "Ar'n't I a Woman," I was appalled, became it seemed to me a misguided attempt to remove the dialect from Truth's speech. My own source for Truth's wonderful statement attesting to women's strength was Erlene Stetson's poetry anthology, Black Sister, where Truth's words are adapted to "poetic format" by Stetson. Anyone who has heard Stetson, herself, perform her rendition of Truth's speech knows that the line "And ain't I a woman" gathers force through repetition until it finally hangs in the air, reverberating through the concluding lines, "together women ought to be able to turn [the world]/rightside up again." These are lines I have presented in the classroom, lines that come alive with the power of womanist/feminist pride. As to the question of historical accuracy? Stetson's presentation of Sojourner Truth's famous speech is poetry, an interpretation clearly born of literary license. With no extant copy of the speech Truth actually delivered at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851, this version, or the version upon which it is based, written by Frances Gage in 1863 (which has Truth saying "ar'n't" not "ain't") may seem entirely appropriate. Historically speaking, however, Sojourner Truth asked neither "and ain't I a woman?" nor "and ar'n't I a woman?". The significance of Nell Irvin Painter's biography, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, is that she speaks both to the historical Sojoumer Truth and to our beloved, constructed image of Truth, carefully separating the two while acknowledging the existence, and the power, of both.
Painter's 1994 article in the Journal of American History titled "Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth's Knowing and Becoming Known" began the work which culminates in Sojourner Truth. In this biography, Painter's interest in separating the historical Truth from the constructed image is immediately clear; a page or so into the opening chapter she states: "We think of Truth as a natural, uncomplicated presence in our national life. Rather than a person in history, she works as a symbol...Strong Black Woman" (4). Consequently, Painter has constructed her own text in three parts, and while the first...